


Yes, Queen of legend

by Slant



Series: Yes, High king [2]
Category: Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types, Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis, Yes Minister
Genre: Book: Prince Caspian, Gen, Loss, Ministry of silly walks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-03
Updated: 2013-12-03
Packaged: 2018-01-03 09:50:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1069039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slant/pseuds/Slant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Pevensies return to Cair Parevel, but it is not quite deserted. One devoted civil servent remains at his station, writing endless reports that no one will read.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Yes, Queen of legend

Susan had been on the edge of tears all evening. She had found the abandoned chess price and they'd more-or-less accepted that yes, logically, on the balance of probability, this was Cair Paravel. Accepting that something was likely the case and getting your head and heart around 'everyone I knew and loved is a thousand years dead, and my greatest deeds are dust in the wind' were slightly different concepts.  
She could see Edmund not saying how much the pathos of finding a loan chessman 'mid the grass echoed the poetic Edda, and loved him for it. It did not make her feel any better.

At that point, someone spoke.  
'The.' The voice, dusty with disuse, trailed off, coughed and tried again. The children pulled closer together and looked out cautiously, peering at the gathering darkness.  
'The Narnian state apologies that we are not able to accommodate your Majesties in the style that your station deserves.'  
There was a moments silence while the children tried to come to terms with that, then Peter remembered the name that went with the voice, and replied.  
'Sir Arnold.' Said Peter 'what happened here? Is this Cair Paravel? Where is everybody?'  
'High king, I did submit all the appropriate reports before their deadlines.' Sir Arnold was not as smooth as some of the civil servants had been, but he was not one to be caught out by questions from the executive branch.  
'I will admit that since the invasion, there have been a few operational issues, but given the staffing concerns, first raised in the first year of your reign and brought up at every meeting of the appropriations committee since that date, I feel that you do the hardworking people of my department a very great disservice to speak so.'

It was, Susan suddenly realised, very hard to suffer a breakdown when a tiresome bureaucrat was doing his best to bore you into not realising that he'd failed to answer the question.  
'Thank you Sir Arnold. Brothers, sister, please excuse us, I have matters to discuss with the department secretary in private.'  
She swept out of the ruined great hall, with the ancient dryad trailing after her.

Outside, in the moonlight, she could see him a little better. He was still gnarled and stooped, face graven with heavy lines, but perhaps slightly less gnarled and slightly less stooped, with lines graven less deeply. Dryads reflected their trees, and though Pinus Longaeva eroded more like rock than anything organic, the hundred year winter had still been beyond unkind to him.  
'I'm glad to see that you are looking well, Sir Arnold.' She'd never liked Sir Arnold, but she had engaged in polite verbal fencing with him for the best years of her life. She felt her eyes brim and kept talking.  
'How long did it take for everything we built to fall apart?'  
'My queen, you are being over-dramatic. We have clear continuity of state power to the present day.'  
Wrangling obstructionist bureaucrats had been the heart of her reign, but right now she couldn't remember the words, couldn't remember the forms.  
'Executive power is vested in me, by divine appointment and popular acclaim. I want a report. One page per century, on my desk tomorrow. Dawn.' She blurted.  
'Really my queen?'  
'No, I'd prefer to talk.'  
Their eyes met, and with reluctance and pain, he began.  
'People lived and people died. Dumb animals and voiceless trees lived and died. All intentions fail in their execution. Only Aslan lives forever.' Sir Arnold's voice was slow and low, groaning like a tree in a high wind.  
'The Narnian succession failed the moment that you vanished. There was a brief interregnum, presided over by regent Tumnus, and various solutions were proposed, none of which met popular approval. You realise that government only works if people let it?'  
'How long?' Susan was trembling, but would not let go.  
'Tumnus was already old and he missed your sister terribly. He didn't live to see the next spring. The centaurs were _never_ involved as such, the talking Beasts lost interest in the State over the next year or so, the Dwarfs left when it was clear that there was no longer any council to take. Some few trees did not wake in the spring; it was the start of a trend. Humphrey stayed to the end, but with no ministers to thwart, joy was gone from him. His fruit have grown very numerous, but none of them have ever awoken."  
"Technically, many were coronated in the interim, but by 1502 we were putting the crown on humans enchanted to take the form of a dumb swan except in moonlight. She only reigned for four nights a year when the migration took her past Cair Paravel."

"Then men came, a land-migration from Telemer, claimed the land, and pushed those of us who Awoke on the first day and our descendants into the margins. Killed those they could find. They avoid the seas and the forests, but I believe several species of Talking Beast are extinct. The Rivers are bridged, the river-spirits are in metaphorical and yet effective chains, and I am the last Tree that still walks. I have no reliable reports of the land off the island of Cair Paravel in the last two centuries, but even before that, Father Christmas and Bacchus had not been seen for years. The Lion did not come."  
Susan had been crying steadily since she heard about poor Mr Tumnus. She did so with a certain grace, kept her complexion, her poise, and did not sniffle, but the tears did not stop, nor did she wish them to. She had failed her kingdom; she could at least weep over its ruins.  
"No one ever said that he was a _tame_ Lion"  
"That is surely a very great consolation to the Elephants and the Kangaroos, the Pelicans and the winged Horse." said Sir Arnold.  
"I don't remember any winged horses or Elephants."  
"Quite so, my queen."

OMAKE

Sir Arnold looked at his weeping queen. He was not one to sympathise with the pain of others. Nonetheless, in Susan's outpouring of grief, he saw some recognisable echo of his own millennia of pain and loss.

"It is against this background, your majesty, that I report that no significant crisis in the standardisation, implementation or availability of silly walks had been reported since your departure. As of the last public consultation, 76% of the populace is moderately to very pleased with the amount and quality of silly walk provision, putting us well ahead of the other nations.


End file.
